Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has long forced assistant coaches on his head coach.
In 2007, Jones hired Jason Garrett for an unnamed position while he hunted for a head coach. Garrett wasn’t hired as head coach but instead became the offensive coordinator for Wade Phillips. Jones has made several other assistant coach hirings himself since.
So, it should come as no surprise that Jones guaranteed Brian Schottenheimer a job regardless of what happened in the Cowboys’ head coaching search in 2025. Schottenheimer had an “agreement” to remain with the team as offensive coordinator if the team didn’t hire him as head coach.
“So, what we did is while they were going through the process — ‘cause there’s a process, right? I wasn’t sure, and there was a number of other teams — saying this very humbly — that were courting me and trying to say, ‘Hey, we want you to come be our coordinator,’” Schottenheimer said on The Twins Take podcast. “And so, you know, after just talking it over with Stephen [Jones] and Jerry, like, OK, while we figure this out and you guys go through the interview process, which there’s a thorough interview process you have to go through. We had made an agreement that I would stay here no matter what. And I didn’t want to leave. … I really wanted to be the head coach and put our fingerprint, our blueprint on it. And that’s what God had planned.”
The Cowboys did not have an eye on some of the hot offensive assistants that offseason, bypassing Ben Johnson and Liam Coen, among others, to interview Leslie Frazier, Robert Saleh and Kellen Moore. Moore likely wanted to call plays himself. Saleh and Frazier are defensive coordinators.
They hired Schottenheimer as head coach, and he went 7-9-1 in his first season as a head coach.
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